93 Comments

It should. The 768MB version seems to perform about 5% better than the 5830, and the 1GB version comes to ~90% of the 5850.

Just on a performance per dollar basis, that means ATI should drop the 5830 to $189 max, with somewhere in the $170-$180 range being more reasonable, and the 5850 needs to drop down to about $249. Basically, we should be looking at 10%-20% price cuts for the 5670, 5750, 5770, 5830, and 5850.

Best way to drop prices would be to ramp up production. Now, if what I've heard is true (fab treats nVidia as a preferred customer, unlike AMD) we will get yet another round of unfair competition, which in the end will hurt us, customers. :(

PSIs it me, or articles on this side seem quite a bit to be more positive on what nVidia does, than what would feel neutral? Marketing hints like "it’s not a simple reduced version of GF100 like what AMD did" all over... :(Reply

Ryan said that because the GF104 isn't a simple reduced version of GF100. Did you notice the part of the article where they talked about superscalar processing? That's not only a marketing bullet point, it's a pretty big change from an architecture point of view, too!Reply

And this detail brings what particular benefit to the user? In particular, contrasting it with competitors (otherwise superior, cooler and faster) solution? Someone makes something wrong, then he has to rework it (the competitor, that did it right from the beginning, doesn't) and this somehow makes he deserve "some credit"?Reply

It's completely true, yet it is confusing at best. Piece of silicon is "praised" for something, that has no practical value to the consumer.

And please, don't compare nVidia article to nVidia article, compare it to AMD:

When 5830 was reviewed, and mind you, it's a nice card that runs cooler, has eyefinity, but is a tad slower than older 49xx, this fact was PUT INTO TITLE, mind you. It was mentioned in the very NAME of the article, that new 200$ card is a tad slower than older ones. (basically the only "bad thing" that one could say about the card)

Anandtech is a tech site that often goes more into the under the hood bits.On some sites you will see them calculating performance per currency numbers, or performance per watt.On Anandtech you will have them discussing things like changes to the architecture, the way the threading works etc.That's not a new thing, and it's not a biased thing, that's just what they do here at AT in their reviews. It just so happens that the GTX460 has some of those under the hood changes compared to the earlier cards based on the same architecture, so they are discussed in the article.If you don't care too much about that sort of thing, you can just skip to the benchmarks. If you are interested in it, then it's a nice addition.Reply

It was like that some day. But now I see more and more troubling signs. iPhone dissapearing from comparison photos ("oh, I've forgotten, it should have been in my pocket") when it has huge disadvantage, but always shown where it has advantage. (and happy readers crowd not "noticing" such "unimportant detail")

AMD's 5830, the 200$ card with the same "it's slower than older... but it has some features" got serious beating right in the title. (guess what, it was actually cooler than older cards, so it had one advantage more than that of nVidia). On the other hand nVidia's 200$ card that is EXACTLY in the same positoin, got PRAISED in the title.

I agree with Lonyo, they are simply pointing out the technical aspects of the silicon. It gives those that follow the latest and greatest developments in chip architecture some food for thought. It was never intended to mislead a customer, the performance numbers are enough evidence to give the customer a decent understanding of what to expect in the real world application of the chip in consideration. Reply

You're being a bit a of a fan-boy in my opinion. The article is very well balanced. Seriously, the 460 is the first good card from nVidia in a long time, and at a genuinely afordable price. ATI finally have some real competition on their hands. Up till now they have owned this generation. And the 5830 was always an odd fit for that market sector. Really, it was just an afterthought on how to repurpose 5870 rejects. It filled a hole, but now that hole doesn't exist anymore. It's the one ATI card from this generation that I really didn't like.Reply

Not all of us scour rumor sites and wait with bated breath for months for the next big thing to come out. For some of us, waiting a few months is no big deal. (especially with the lack of any "must-have" gaming titles. The heyday of PC gaming is long over.)

Since the launch-price 5850's (which didn't last long), the GTX 460 seems to be the first really good buy out there. The 5770 didn't outperform the 4870, the 5830 was an overpriced turd, the price-gouged 5850's and 5870's aren't good price/performance bargains, the GTX 470 and 480 are no better and are power hogs to boot.

THIS has me excited -- especially the SLI scaling. $400-$460 in cards that'll often beat a $700 5970? And they have low idle power consumption and decent load consumption (for the performance)? I mean in that price range is the 5870, GTX 480, and 4870 x2, and GTX 460 SLI beats them all. The 5870 has much lower load power consumption going for it but it's also significantly slower.Unless you're going to need the power of 5870 in CF, the GTX 460 seems to be the way to go.Reply

Excellent writeup! I really enjoyed you going into depth on the architectural changes. I couldn't agree more that it's superb to see NVIDIA get back into the efficiency game - whether it be performance/price or performance/watt (and, by extension, temperature). Here's to hoping that AMD was sitting on something to combat this!

P.S. Small typo: For everything but the high-end, this year is a feature yet and not a performance year.Reply

The graphs shown are leaving out too many new derivatives of cards, making is good for contrasting results, but poor for consistent data comparison. Conveniently left out are many cards in one graph that are in another. I'm disappointed in your presentation and find you've concentrated too much on the presentation of your article.Reply

Out of curiosity, what's not in our graphs that you'd like to see? At 2560 we run a limited number of cards because most cards are too slow to post a passable framerate, otherwise at 1920 and 1680 we have the complete 5700/5800/5900 series, GTX 400 series, GTX 200 series, and Radeon 4800 series, along with a 3870 and 8800GT. Is there something else you would like?Reply

Not a bad card. I ordered a 5850 for my new build. 460 is a little less performing but more quite. The ordered 5850 is out of stock and no due date. However till the 460's arrive it will probably also be a few weeks...Need to wait on price. usually quite a bit higher here.Reply

Looks like a great part from Nvidia that seems to hit the same target price and performance markets as the wildly 8800GT before it. Much as the G92 and its derivatives dominated the gaming market while bringing DX10 to the mainstream, GTX 460 may be poised to do the same.Reply

I doubt they're willing to drop the price on the 5850 enough to truly compete with the GTX 460, especially the 768MB version.. Maybe match the 1GB version's $230 price point by going to $250 but then what does that do to the 5870? Who's going to buy a 5870 at $400 when a 5850 only costs $250? Either way it looks like Nvidia has that $200-$250 market locked tight and in a few months with MIRs that'll shift to the $160-$220 range.Reply

Considering the launch prices were $260/$380, there's no reason to imagine a drop to $250 would leave the 5870 at $400.Maybe we would see something like $250/$350. Finally a drop from launch prices.Reply

I know you guys are all up in arms when a company releases information about up coming products, but you know that's information that can help a consumer.. I was looking for a card that was powerful enough while being quite and not using too much power. I ended up with a 5770 and I think it's a great product, however this the 460 offers 5830 performance at 5770 power and noise for only $30 more. I would have waited another week if I had any idea this was coming. You can't tell me nobody at Anandtech knew this was coming. Your anti-paper launch campain has a down site, it doesn't give consumers valuable information and as a result the video card I'll be using for the next couple years will be much less powerful then it would have been if the 465 artical just gave me a heads up, or just a little message saying hold off on $200 video card purchases something's coming. I only buy a new video card every few years please give me the information I need to make the best purchase. In this case waiting another week is what I should have done.Reply

If you notice, everyone put out their info on this card today. That is because an NDA. Even suggesting anything about this card without nVidia's permission is a quick way to guarantee you won't get future releases. Reply

This is a review site, not a news or rumours site. If you are interested in the what the next couple of months bring from companies like Intel, AMD and nVidia, you need to start using sites like Fudzilla, that report hardware news and rumours.

And trust me, there was plenty of information on the 460 being in the making and probably outperforming the 465 at a lower price point. :)

And if you regret the purchase of a 9 month old card because one that just got released has higher performance (20%-40%?), while using more electricity (20%), costs more (60% - 130€ to 210€ for the cheapest cards each), you are going to be a very sad PC buyer, because normally, a new product will be faster _and_ cheaper, while now it is just faster, but a hellovalot more expensive too. :-)Reply

No real discussion of the reduction in polymorph engine to shader ratio, such as tessellation benchmarks (synthetic or otherwise).Nothing on minimum frame rates (and anything which is put up uses the older 10.3 drivers for ATI).In addition to the general compute performance benchmarks that you mention.

Nothing about CUDA games (e.g. Just Cause 2) comparing the GTX465 to the GTX460.No consideration of ROP vs memory changes (i.e. is it memory bandwidth limited or is it purely the ROP reduction causing the performance hit on the 768MB card).

Maybe the cards didn't come out in time. Maybe everything, or more stuff at least, will be covered in Pt 2, but it is somewhat disappointing that so many things are totally missing.Reply

You hit the nail on the head with your comment on time. I actually have the data, but with the limited amount of time I had I wasn't able to write the analysis (most of my time was spent on better covering the architecture). That will be amended to the article later today, but for now you can see the raw graphs.

I hope I didn't come off as too harsh. I started writing and then towards the end realised it could be a time thing, and didn't go back to amend what I had written.After looking at most other sites, their reviews are sometimes even worse, covering only a very small handful of games.

Thanks for the early graphs, much appreciated. Shame NV didn't give more time for proper reviews.Reply

- maybe in your country my dear friend.......maybe there i tell you ;)- in my country is 300 you see.......300 as a price start i mean :)- and for those 100 extra i buy another hdd for example, not another video card if you know what i mean- so, maybe is worth for you, but for me to jump from 4870 to this......- i am sorry, but it is not wort it........Reply

good review but a bit partial towards the new born child(gtx 460, cant hold that kind of joy).......its pretty much still oranges and apples .....both are good and differ at a few games. Nvidia shouldn't have sold 480, 470, 465 and instead should be waiting back to mature the chip into 104gf.....think about the owners of gf100 chip reading this and cursing themselves for not holding back for a month. But all said and done from both sides, we all know that Nvidia is still no:1 when it comes to drivers and software support updates.Reply

The quality and depth of these articles is exactly why I keep Anandtech bookmarked.

Also, it's good to see nVidia with its headon straight. I was afraid I'd have to give up CUDA and all those other goodies on my next upgrade, because there was no way in GF100-hell I was going to buy a GTX470 toaster.Reply

Agreed. That would probably be the most common CF setup and certainly the most applicable from a cost-comparison standpoint. Sure it would be $600 vs. $400 but why have the 5870 CF which is even more crazy at $800 vs. $400?Reply

I read the review & it was pretty good & well written. It is good to see Nvidia get their act together somewhat. I am not a Nvidia fan any more lost faith in them when they started rebranding the 8800 series over & over again & I switched to ATI after that. I still have a 9800GT 1GB in one of my systems which I rebadged myself from a 8800GT 1GB & clocked it at 755Mhz core & 2200mhz memory it is fast enough for my secondary system for when friends come over to game.

This new chip from nvidia makes a lot more sense than what they released a few months ago. Would I own on hell no. I already have enough money tied up in video cards in my main system as I own 2 4870x2 2GB cards highly over clocked crossfired until ATI comes out with a single card that can beat my 2 beasts in quad GPU I am fine with what I have.Reply

I actually think it should be called a 460. People with a reasonable amount of tech knowledge are going to know the difference, and people without it are already trained to think that a bigger RAM number is always better (see the tons of "bargain" cards with 1GB+ of slow DDR.)

Basically, the performance differential here is already clear from the full product name, and we have one fewer model number muddying a GPU market already overflowing with a ridiculous amount of model names that have identical, nearly identical, or completely misleading performance capabilities relative to other model names.Reply

I would agree with you except for the common practice of mfg's doubling up on VRAM. When that happens, there will be 768MB, 1GB, 1.5GB, and 2GB versions, and people will have no idea the 1.5GB will probably be slower than the 1GB version.Reply

"This in turn means the blades of the fan sit at the same height as the lip, blocking direct airflow out the back. With this design the card is still exhausting at least some air out of the rear of the card, but it shouldn’t be as much as a fully-open card such as our custom Asus GTX 460."

rear and back are the same thing. I think you meant to say the the cover blocks direct airflow out the front.Reply

While a very nice card...too little too late...i got a 5870 3 weeks ago. if you have a high end quad core and want to play BFBC2 in the highest settings only a gtx480 or 5870 will do. i chose the cheaper, cooler and more efficient card. Reply

On your power consumption + noise charts (at the very least), the Zotac card's results are shown with white text superimposed over a yellow bar on the graph. This makes the white text almost completely unreadable. One can guess at the numbers based on context, but still . . .Reply

I really appreciate the work done on the tests and especially the charts. I'm glad to see my somewhat aging 4870 on the list for comparison. Seems like I'll be handing it over to my nephews in favor of a 5870 soon. Just waiting and hoping for prices to drop in the next month or so. Crossing fingers!Reply

This is my gripe with the reviews lately. Your aging 4870 is on that list, yet we can't get a 5850 CF number??? Really??? There's even a 3870 in some bench charts..

Not like I can't go look it up somewhere else, but it's pretty ridiculous that 5850 CF seems to always be missing. I have one and am considering two. It would be nice to see how 460 1GB SLI fared alongside 5850 CF.Reply

The issue you've mentioned plagues many, if not ALL, online reviews. I truly cannot understand why they can't or won't include suitable video cards for comparisons. The only difficulty is to maintain the test setups are the same, otherwise keeping the info in a database and updating it is rational. Even with the charts here, some cards are listed and then not listed in other charts.

I have 30" screens so I mostly view the highest resolution performance charts but even then I have to resort lower resolutions to find cards I'm interested in. I'm just thankful that if Anand is missing what I need, I can go to other sites and pray to God I can find it there AND be able to make a reasonable comparison (test setups and such differing).Reply

I'm glad to see a component review on AT again. Every day for what feels like an eternity now, it's been nothing but cell phones, laptops, pre-built rigs, and all manner of factory assembled consumer electronica. I'm off to read the vendor-specific 460 article now!Reply

the gtx 465 was a joke , especially at the price. however , this 460 looks like a great card at a great price. If this is a sign of things to come from nvidia us guys running ati right now might have to take notice.Reply

I see a lot of ATI fanboys on here. Read other reviews, a GTX 460 *1GB* OCed past 800 beats a HD5850 and gets in HD5870 territory. In DirectX 11, this 460 really shines over.

Don't forget, the reviews are based on Nvidia drivers that are *1 day old* now. Expect the GTX 460 framerates to increase even more once the drivers mature.

I was almost ready to pull the trigger on a HD5850, but glad I held back (read: I really don't care for either Nvidia or ATI). I really see the GTX 460 being a standard that game software developers will use in the future. Features like CUDA, Fermi and PhysX will play a more significant role in newer games. I just want a card that gives me most for my money.Reply

How much better it would have been to see the 384SP version on launch day... seriously wtf is wrong with NV&TSMC's circuit design/fab process that makes manufacture of FULL parts so much more difficult than it is for ATI&TSMC? 5770, 4770, and 4750 were all full die parts produced with good yields TSMC. Genuinely, though some may be alright with it, there is no desire for dead silicon.Reply

Pretty impressive gtx 460 crossfire results, trading blows with crossfire setups double its value. Overall a nice card, but shame it wasn't released 6 months ago when a lot of us just got tired of waiting. I probably would have bought it over the 5850 had this card been released in time. Oh well... better luck next year for Nvidia to take my money. Reply

I hate to be a comment repeater, but can 5850 CF results please beincluded? The tables are distinctly incomplete without this since the1GB 460 clearly competes directly against the 5850; the most commondiscussion I see on forums is how 1GB 460 SLI compares to 5850 CF. Onprice alone, 1GB 460 SLI is definitely better, so no wonder there aregames-bundling deals such as the following now appearing to sweeten5850 sales:

I want ask how did You make test Badaboom on GTX 460? According to Elemental Technologies inc. currently Badaboom doesn't support GF100,GF104 graphic card. Apps. crashed if try open any video file.Reply

To be able to select the cards you are interested in with checkboxes in the reviews so you can compare the cards easily. I know there is the GPU bench but I can't seem to compare more than 2 gpus at a time.Reply

Fresh levels load very jerky, like steps fwd, as the game begins and causes the first few seconds to halt, halt, halt, until everything loads. My 8800GTX did not do this, everything woud run smooter as the textures loaded. I'm also experiencing long waits for the screen to turn on after time outs or sleep. Black Ops was unplayable and other games that ran smoothly on the 8800 now are jerky. Sniff...Reply